Armed protester at Bloomington city hall prompts concerns about street homelessness, comms protocols, security

Late Tuesday afternoon (Feb. 25), on the bricked plaza in front of Bloomington’s city hall, a person with an AR-15-style rifle was passing out flyers for the Rainbow Panther Party with a call to “combat the city’s fascist policies against the unhoused.” 

The one-person demonstration reportedly lasted a couple more hours as the armed person made their way down 7th Street, before it concluded without incident. 

The episode drew attention to public policy issues like gun laws and security, communication from local government to the public about such situations, and the community’s response to unhoused people.

One response to the local crisis of street homelessness during extreme cold weather has been the Bloomington Severe Winter Emergency Shelter (B-SWERS).

B-SWERS is a joint effort of two downtown Bloomington churches—at First Christian Church and First United Methodist Church (FUMC) to provide shelter on “white flag nights," when temperatures fall below 30 F degrees. 

The National Weather Service forecast for this coming Saturday night (March 1) calls for an overnight low temperature of 21 F degrees.   

So B-SWERS is currently calling for volunteers to staff the emergency shelter on Saturday night,  The email address for inquiries is btownsevereshelter@gmail.com An online webform has also been set up for potential volunteers: B-SWERS volunteer form.

What happened on Tuesday?

As the demonstration unfolded, reports of the armed person outside city hall filtered into the Nat U. Hill room at the historic county courthouse, where The B Square was covering a county council meeting. The courthouse is about two blocks away from city hall. 

Some elected officials, staff, and other attendees of the county council meeting had connections to law enforcement or city hall. They started receiving text messages about the armed person. That led to enough distraction that council president Jennifer Crossley followed the suggestion of councilor David Henry, and recessed the meeting for a few minutes.   

Inside the courthouse, the chatter included the idea of an “active shooter” at city hall. But when the B Square arrived at the plaza in front of the city hall building on Morton Street, it was clear there was no active shooter. 

The lack of any cordoned off area was one clue. Police officers on the scene included police chief Mike Diekhoff and deputy chief Scott Oldham, who were keeping tabs on the situation from the parking lot. A small handful of bystanders watched from the perimeter of the plaza. 

When The B Square approached, the armed person offered two color-printed flyers for the Rainbow Panther Party—one that included this year’s Bloomington city council group photo with a red X drawn through it. 

The person declined to give their name, but said they are the membership secretary of the Rainbow Panther Party. The secretary declined to give the number of members, but said it is a “small party.” 

Responding to a B Square question, the secretary replied with a description of the party’s “winter survival campaign,” doing volunteer work at shelters. The Bloomington Severe Winter Emergency Shelter (B-SWERS) is of the homeless shelters that’s mentioned in the secretary’s Campaign Report No. 1, which is a document available on the party’s website. 

The secretary’s report includes a personal grievance, as well as one based on funding policy. The report says that after volunteering with the emergency shelter, the secretary was “banned from volunteering after putting in many late night hours and being consistently misgendered by other volunteers.” 

Sarah Lynne Gershon, associate minister at First Christian, and Caleb Hoagland, volunteer coordinator with B-SWERS, confirmed to The B Square that a person fitting the secretary’s description had volunteered at the shelter, but had been asked to stop volunteering based on their interactions with other volunteers. 

As far as the complaint about misgendering, Hoagland texted to The B Square: 

We have always made an effort to prioritize trans community members. As volunteer coordinator I was never made aware of any of these allegations. We have numerous volunteers from all different backgrounds and all different gender identities, sexual orientations, and creeds. …It saddens me that they have grievances against the shelter… The shelter would never stand for any incident like that. As a queer person myself, I am hypervigilant to make sure that all lgbtq+ folk are treated with respect and compassion just like any of our other guests or volunteers. 

The secretary’s grievance about funding policy is a claim that Bloomington’s city council “gave no budget to winter survival shelters.” 

When The B Square spoke with the secretary on Tuesday outside city hall, they put it like this: “[The city council] is making policies that are directly against the people, and causing deaths on the street, and refusing to take accountability for it.” They continued, “Something has to be done about it, and that's why I have this here thing [referring to the rifle] in my hands today.”

Funding for established shelters versus newer start-up efforts   

B-SWERS was formed early 2024 when Bloomington mayor Kerry Thompson called community faith leaders together and asked: What can we do for emergency shelter situations? B-SWERS is based off guidelines and concepts from Bloomington’s former Interfaith Shelter.

How much activity has B-SWERS seen this season? 

If enough volunteers sign up to open B-SWERS this coming Saturday, that will make the 40th night this season the emergency shelter has been open, according to volunteer coordinator Caleb Hoagland.  Most of those 40 nights, the 30 beds (floor mats with bedding) have been filled, Hoagland said.

The mix of women and men seeking shelter at B-SWERS is about 25 percent women and 75 percent men, Hoagland said. 

The secretary’s complaint, that Bloomington’s city government has not provided financial support for B-SWERS, is to some extent shared by the organizers of the emergency shelter. 

As the fiscal body of the city government, it’s the city council that holds the purse strings. But it’s the Bloomington mayor’s office that is in a position to execute on available funding.

Sarah Lynne Gershon, associate minister at First Christian, told The B Square that Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson, working with the city’s housing and neighborhood development (HAND) department, has offered only to reimburse the churches for wear and tear on the buildings, as a result of hosting the shelter. 

Thomson confirmed to The B Square that in response to a request from B-SWERS, the city had offered to reimburse the costs of wear and tear on physical infrastructure of the church building—up to $19,000. Gershon told The B Square there is still no contract in place between the churches and the city to specify the required documentation for getting reimbursement. 

Thomson told The B Square that she and HAND director Anna Killion-Hanson had met with the leadership of B-SWERS and let them know that the city is grateful for what they have done. 

About the city’s decision not to provide funding for B-SWERS operations (staff, supplies, and the like), Thomson said that her administration’s funding decisions in the area of addressing homelessness are following the recommendation of Heading Home of South Central Indiana. That’s an organization supported by city and county governments, the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County, the South Central Housing Network, and United Way of South Central Indiana.  

Thomson said, “Any funding that's coming from our administration will only go to entities that are compliant with Heading Home’s strategies.” 

The recommendation from Heading Home is to shore up shelters like Beacon’s Friend’s Place and Wheeler Mission’s men’s shelter with additional bunk beds and floor mats for expansion on white flag nights. But the recommendation from Heading Home is to fund any B-SWERS personnel by paying for the compensation of Friend’s Place staff to help out at B-SWERS. 

First Christian’s Sarah Lynne Gershon told The B Square she appreciates Friend’s Place and Wheeler Mission, but does not think it's fair to expect Friend’s Place to house even more people in their building. 

So Gershon said B-SWERS intends to organize for next season (2025-2026) as well. “From our perspective, we have seen a clear need,” Gershon said.     

Gershon told The B Square that pastor Lisa Schubert Nowlin at First United Methodist, has applied for a grant from Perry Township to help fund B-SWERS next season. This season, B-SWERS received a $5,000 grant from Bloomington Township. 

Communication about the armed person: Adequate?

On Tuesday evening, employees at city hall received an email message from Bloomington mayor Kerry Thomson about the person with the rifle, who is described in the mayor’s message as armed and passing out literature. Thomson’s message says that police are aware and monitoring the situation, and adds that the person, “has not been threatening or done anything illegal.”

The advice to employees in Thomson’s email message is to leave the building through the north exit, if they want to avoid interactions with the armed person at the south (main) entrance.

Thomson told The B Square she was not inside city hall at the time—she was writing based on information provided to her by Bloomington police.  

For people who were in city hall on Tuesday evening, and might not have seen the email message, personnel were assigned to go through the building and to notify them, Thomson said.

City councilmember Sydney Zulich told the B Square she did not receive an email message from the mayor about the armed person—she learned about the situation from a friend. 

Thomson told The B Square that councilmembers are supposed to be on the email distribution list she used. But new councilmembers who were sworn in at the start of 2024, which included Zulich, were not added to the list. They have now been added, Thomson said.

For councilmember Dave Rollo, who has served on the city council for more than 20 years, it was the content of the communication from the mayor that he found lacking. Given the fact that there was an armed person standing outside city hall distributing literature with the council’s photo X-ed out, he messaged The B Square: “Why must councilmembers find out via Reddit the nature of the threat directed at us?” Rollo indicated that a phone call to councilmembers would have been warranted.

County councilor David Henry was sitting with his colleagues in the Nat U. Hill Room of the county courthouse when news started filtering into the venue via private messaging channels. Henry said he did not feel well informed about the situation as the council meeting unfolded.

Henry brings to the topic his perspective as an adjunct faculty member at Indiana University, who teaches courses on emergency management and homeland security.  

Henry said it’s very hard to know in the first 30 to 90 seconds what's going on, and the first information is not always the most accurate information. As an incident moves on from the 90-second mark, and it’s clear there isn't an actual shooting going on, but someone who has presented themselves in a certain way with a long gun and who is handing out literature, a reassessment should be made, Henry said. 

For incidents that take place on the Indiana University campus, the bit-by-bit assembly of more accurate information would be pushed out to the IU community through IU Notify, Henry said. IU Notify is a mass communication tool for alerting students, faculty, and staff to immediate threats.

Henry added that parents with kids at a public school event after hours would have received a notification about a potential incident or situation. Henry said that even with Monroe County government’s alert system—which is primarily set up for tornadoes and bad weather—there was not any sort of notification that incrementally assessed or appraised the situation, as things developed on Tuesday afternoon.

Henry deferred to law enforcement to assess the flyers that were distributed and to analyze them. Henry said that even if Tuesday’s situation proves to be a “nothing thing,” it is better to err on the side of caution, and reexamine how communication could have been better. 

Henry said, “As a practice, the [Monroe County government] could probably look at how it does its notifications better, at least internally, to know if a building should be locked down, and when that building is all clear to resume things.” Henry added, “I didn't get a sense that we had that at our fingertips.”

Security and gun laws

In addition to a lack of communication about the threat directed at councilmembers, Rollo pointed out that the topic of improved security for city council chambers has long been a point of concern for the council.   For years, he has asked for kevlar shielding for the dais, Rollo said.

At an April 2024 work session, city councilmember  Kate Rosenbarger noted that her father worked for 47 years at the city of New Albany, Indiana, where the city hall has metal detectors at all the doors.  Rosenbarger said Indiana’s gun laws mean that it’s not possible to keep anyone from bringing a gun inside the building. But if someone does bring in a gun, it gets detected, and the person has a choice: They can leave it locked in a safe at the front, or else someone escorts that person during their time in the building.

Speaking to The B Square, Thomson said the legal advice she’s received is that city staff can’t treat people with guns differently. They can’t ask someone why they have a gun, and staff cannot tell them they need to put it somewhere. “We certainly can't tell them they can't come in with it,” Thomson said. 

The armed person in front of city hall on Tuesday seemed well-versed about gun laws, including Bloomington’s local ordinance [BMC 2.04.225], which they cited to The B Square: “The intentional display of firearms is prohibited at any public meeting of the council.”

At the time the armed person was standing outside city hall, the board of public works was holding its regular biweekly meeting. But the point of the demonstration was not about any of the board’s agenda items.  

Part of the point of the demonstration was to highlight the legal option for people to arm themselves in public places. The armed person said about the board, “It's very clear that they are not doing their jobs, and they're directly oppressing the people.” They continued, “I'm coming here not to convince the board of public works. I'm not coming here to convince the city council. I'm not here to convince oppressors. I'm mostly here saying to the people: You can do this.”

As far as alarming people with an apparent threat, the armed person responded to a B Square question by saying, “I think it shows whose side you're on. People are not on my side, if you are inherently scared of me following laws, if you are inherently scared of me carrying this, and defending myself, defending myself in a public space, when I have done nothing, and I have not been threatening anybody.” They added, “This is not here to make things more unsafe. This is to make things more safe.”

Responding to a B Square question, Thomson said, “If safety were no concern at all, we could unlock every area of city hall. But unfortunately, safety is the concern, and so we have implemented some protocols.” 

Thomson said that at the start of her administration she got feedback from all of the departments on the balance of a wide-open city hall and safety concerns. “We did make moves to make things feel more welcoming, but we also instated a front desk check-in process for increased safety and awareness of who was in the building and why.”

“We have been having discussions on other things we might be able to do to increase safety that's within the means of our budget and jurisdiction.” Thomson added, “We need to implement things that increase the safety of all.” 

[Note: The reporter is married to Mary Morgan, who is director of Heading Home of South Central Indiana, which is mentioned in the article as an organization on which the Bloomington mayor’s office relies for recommendations on funding policy.]